War and Peace : Book 02, Chapter 10

1869

People

(1828 - 1910) ~ Father of Christian Anarchism : In 1861, during the second of his European tours, Tolstoy met with Proudhon, with whom he exchanged ideas. Inspired by the encounter, Tolstoy returned to Yasnaya Polyana to found thirteen schools that were the first attempt to implement a practical model of libertarian education. (From : Anarchy Archives.) • "The Government and all those of the upper classes near the Government who live by other people's work, need some means of dominating the workers, and find this means in the control of the army. Defense against foreign enemies is only an excuse. The German Government frightens its subjects about the Russians and the French; the French Government, frightens its people about the Germans; the Russian Government frightens its people about the French and the Germans; and that is the way with all Governments. But neither Germans nor Russians nor Frenchmen desire to fight their neighbors or other people; but, living in peace, they dread war more than anything else in the world." (From : "Letter to a Non-Commissioned Officer," by Leo Tol....) • "If, in former times, Governments were necessary to defend their people from other people's attacks, now, on the contrary, Governments artificially disturb the peace that exists between the nations, and provoke enmity among them." (From : "Patriotism and Government," by Leo Tolstoy, May 1....) • "People who take part in Government, or work under its direction, may deceive themselves or their sympathizers by making a show of struggling; but those against whom they struggle (the Government) know quite well, by the strength of the resistance experienced, that these people are not really pulling, but are only pretending to." (From : "A Letter to Russian Liberals," by Leo Tolstoy, Au....)

CHAPTER X

Prince Andrew stayed at Brünn with Bilíbin, a Russian acquaintance of his
in the diplomatic service.

“Ah, my dear prince! I could not have a more welcome visitor,” said
Bilíbin as he came out to meet Prince Andrew. “Franz, put the prince’s
things in my bedroom,” said he to the servant who was ushering Bolkónski
in. “So you’re a messenger of victory, eh? Splendid! And I am sitting here
ill, as you see.”

After washing and dressing, Prince Andrew came into the diplomat’s
luxurious study and sat down to the dinner prepared for him. Bilíbin
settled down comfortably beside the fire.

After his journey and the campaign during which he had been deprived of
all the comforts of cleanliness and all the refinements of life, Prince
Andrew felt a pleasant sense of repose among luxurious surroundings such
as he had been accustomed to from childhood. Besides it was pleasant,
after his reception by the Austrians, to speak if not in Russian (for they
were speaking French) at least with a Russian who would, he supposed,
share the general Russian antipathy to the Austrians which was then
particularly strong.

Bilíbin was a man of thirty-five, a bachelor, and of the same circle as
Prince Andrew. They had known each other previously in Petersburg, but had
become more intimate when Prince Andrew was in Vienna with Kutúzov. Just
as Prince Andrew was a young man who gave promise of rising high in the
military profession, so to an even greater extent Bilíbin gave promise of
rising in his diplomatic career. He still a young man but no longer a
young diplomat, as he had entered the service at the age of sixteen, had
been in Paris and Copenhagen, and now held a rather important post in
Vienna. Both the foreign minister and our ambassador in Vienna knew him
and valued him. He was not one of those many diplomats who are esteemed
because they have certain negative qualities, avoid doing certain things,
and speak French. He was one of those, who, liking work, knew how to do
it, and despite his indolence would sometimes spend a whole night at his
writing table. He worked well whatever the import of his work. It was not
the question “What for?” but the question “How?” that interested him. What
the diplomatic matter might be he did not care, but it gave him great
pleasure to prepare a circular, memorandum, or report, skillfully,
pointedly, and elegantly. Bilíbin’s services were valued not only for what
he wrote, but also for his skill in dealing and conversing with those in
the highest spheres.

Bilíbin liked conversation as he liked work, only when it could be made
elegantly witty. In society he always awaited an opportunity to say
something striking and took part in a conversation only when that was
possible. His conversation was always sprinkled with wittily original,
finished phrases of general interest. These sayings were prepared in the
inner laboratory of his mind in a portable form as if intentionally, so
that insignificant society people might carry them from drawing room to
drawing room. And, in fact, Bilíbin’s witticisms were hawked about in the
Viennese drawing rooms and often had an influence on matters considered
important.

His thin, worn, sallow face was covered with deep wrinkles, which always
looked as clean and well washed as the tips of one’s fingers after a
Russian bath. The movement of these wrinkles formed the principal play of
expression on his face. Now his forehead would pucker into deep folds and
his eyebrows were lifted, then his eyebrows would descend and deep
wrinkles would crease his cheeks. His small, deep-set eyes always twinkled
and looked out straight.

“Well, now tell me about your exploits,” said he.

Bolkónski, very modestly without once mentioning himself, described the
engagement and his reception by the Minister of War.

“They received me and my news as one receives a dog in a game of
skittles,” said he in conclusion.

* “But my dear fellow, with all my respect for the Orthodox
Russian army, I must say that your victory was not
particularly victorious.”

He went on talking in this way in French, uttering only those words in
Russian on which he wished to put a contemptuous emphasis.

“Come now! You with all your forces fall on the unfortunate Mortier and
his one division, and even then Mortier slips through your fingers!
Where’s the victory?”

“But seriously,” said Prince Andrew, “we can at any rate say without
boasting that it was a little better than at Ulm...”

“Why didn’t you capture one, just one, marshal for us?”

“Because not everything happens as one expects or with the smoothness of a
parade. We had expected, as I told you, to get at their rear by seven in
the morning but had not reached it by five in the afternoon.”

“And why didn’t you do it at seven in the morning? You ought to have been
there at seven in the morning,” returned Bilíbin with a smile. “You ought
to have been there at seven in the morning.”

“Why did you not succeed in impressing on Bonaparte by diplomatic methods
that he had better leave Genoa alone?” retorted Prince Andrew in the same
tone.

“I know,” interrupted Bilíbin, “you’re thinking it’s very easy to take
marshals, sitting on a sofa by the fire! That is true, but still why
didn’t you capture him? So don’t be surprised if not only the Minister of
War but also his Most August Majesty the Emperor and King Francis is not
much delighted by your victory. Even I, a poor secretary of the Russian
Embassy, do not feel any need in token of my joy to give my Franz a
thaler, or let him go with his Liebchen to the Prater... True, we have no
Prater here...”

He looked straight at Prince Andrew and suddenly unwrinkled his forehead.

“It is now my turn to ask you ‘why?’ mon cher,” said Bolkónski. “I confess
I do not understand: perhaps there are diplomatic subtleties here beyond
my feeble intelligence, but I can’t make it out. Mac loses a whole army,
the Archduke Ferdinand and the Archduke Karl give no signs of life and
make blunder after blunder. Kutúzov alone at last gains a real victory,
destroying the spell of the invincibility of the French, and the Minister
of War does not even care to hear the details.”

“That’s just it, my dear fellow. You see it’s hurrah for the Czar, for
Russia, for the Orthodox Greek faith! All that is beautiful, but what do
we, I mean the Austrian court, care for your victories? Bring us nice news
of a victory by the Archduke Karl or Ferdinand (one archduke’s as good as
another, as you know) and even if it is only over a fire brigade of
Bonaparte’s, that will be another story and we’ll fire off some cannon!
But this sort of thing seems done on purpose to vex us. The Archduke Karl
does nothing, the Archduke Ferdinand disgraces himself. You abandon
Vienna, give up its defense—as much as to say: ‘Heaven is with us,
but heaven help you and your capital!’ The one general whom we all loved,
Schmidt, you expose to a bullet, and then you congratulate us on the
victory! Admit that more irritating news than yours could not have been
conceived. It’s as if it had been done on purpose, on purpose. Besides,
suppose you did gain a brilliant victory, if even the Archduke Karl gained
a victory, what effect would that have on the general course of events?
It’s too late now when Vienna is occupied by the French army!”

“What? Occupied? Vienna occupied?”

“Not only occupied, but Bonaparte is at Schönbrunn, and the count, our
dear Count Vrbna, goes to him for orders.”

After the fatigues and impressions of the journey, his reception, and
especially after having dined, Bolkónski felt that he could not take in
the full significance of the words he heard.

“Count Lichtenfels was here this morning,” Bilíbin continued, “and showed
me a letter in which the parade of the French in Vienna was fully
described: Prince Murat et tout le tremblement... You see that your
victory is not a matter for great rejoicing and that you can’t be received
as a savior.”

“Really I don’t care about that, I don’t care at all,” said Prince Andrew,
beginning to understand that his news of the battle before Krems was
really of small importance in view of such events as the fall of Austria’s
capital. “How is it Vienna was taken? What of the bridge and its
celebrated bridgehead and Prince Auersperg? We heard reports that Prince
Auersperg was defending Vienna?” he said.

“Prince Auersperg is on this, on our side of the river, and is defending
us—doing it very badly, I think, but still he is defending us. But
Vienna is on the other side. No, the bridge has not yet been taken and I
hope it will not be, for it is mined and orders have been given to blow it
up. Otherwise we should long ago have been in the mountains of Bohemia,
and you and your army would have spent a bad quarter of an hour between
two fires.”

“But still this does not mean that the campaign is over,” said Prince
Andrew.

“Well, I think it is. The bigwigs here think so too, but they daren’t say
so. It will be as I said at the beginning of the campaign, it won’t be
your skirmishing at Dürrenstein, or gunpowder at all, that will decide the
matter, but those who devised it,” said Bilíbin quoting one of his own
mots, releasing the wrinkles on his forehead, and pausing. “The only
question is what will come of the meeting between the Emperor Alexander
and the King of Prussia in Berlin? If Prussia joins the Allies, Austria’s
hand will be forced and there will be war. If not it is merely a question
of settling where the preliminaries of the new Campo Formio are to be
drawn up.”

“What an extraordinary genius!” Prince Andrew suddenly exclaimed,
clenching his small hand and striking the table with it, “and what luck
the man has!”

“Buonaparte?” said Bilíbin inquiringly, puckering up his forehead to
indicate that he was about to say something witty. “Buonaparte?” he
repeated, accentuating the u: “I think, however, now that he lays down
laws for Austria at Schönbrunn, il faut lui faire grâce de l’u! * I shall
certainly adopt an innovation and call him simply Bonaparte!”

“This is what I think. Austria has been made a fool of, and she is not
used to it. She will retaliate. And she has been fooled in the first place
because her provinces have been pillaged—they say the Holy Russian
army loots terribly—her army is destroyed, her capital taken, and
all this for the beaux yeux * of His Sardinian Majesty. And therefore—this
is between ourselves—I instinctively feel that we are being
deceived, my instinct tells me of negotiations with France and projects
for peace, a secret peace concluded separately.”

* Fine eyes.

“Impossible!” cried Prince Andrew. “That would be too base.”

“If we live we shall see,” replied Bilíbin, his face again becoming smooth
as a sign that the conversation was at an end.

When Prince Andrew reached the room prepared for him and lay down in a
clean shirt on the feather bed with its warmed and fragrant pillows, he
felt that the battle of which he had brought tidings was far, far away
from him. The alliance with Prussia, Austria’s treachery, Bonaparte’s new
triumph, tomorrow’s levee and parade, and the audience with the Emperor
Francis occupied his thoughts.

He closed his eyes, and immediately a sound of cannonading, of musketry
and the rattling of carriage wheels seemed to fill his ears, and now again
drawn out in a thin line the musketeers were descending the hill, the
French were firing, and he felt his heart palpitating as he rode forward
beside Schmidt with the bullets merrily whistling all around, and he
experienced tenfold the joy of living, as he had not done since childhood.

He woke up...

“Yes, that all happened!” he said, and, smiling happily to himself like a
child, he fell into a deep, youthful slumber.